Issued:  January 26, 2021

American Airlines will begin monitoring common booking practices which may result in an unfavorable outcome.

These practices are identified as:

• Churning

• Hidden City

• Inactive Segments

• Marriage Segment

• Origin and Destination (O&D) Manipulation

Further detail on these offenses can be found on our addendum to the Governing Travel Agency Agreement (GTAA) for ARC accredited agencies and the IATA Passenger Sales Agency Agreement for international agencies. It is important that you familiarize yourself with these unfavorable practices as it will help prevent the issuance of future debit memos.

Additionally, please be aware that automation will be rolling out in phases to help us identify these types of occurrences and detailed remarks will be entered in the SSR OTHS Field.  Our first phase will identify excessive churning, and messaging will be placed in the booking as follows:

SSR OTHS YY  RIPA/EXCESSIVE CHURNING

Future phase messaging:

SSR OTHS YY  RIPA/HIDDEN CITY PARTIALLY USED ITINERARY

SSR OTHS YY  RIPA/MARRIED SEGMENT VIOLATION

SSR OTHS YY  RIPA/ORIG DEST VIOLATION CLASS NO AVAILABLE

SSR OTHS YY  RIPA/INACTIVE SEG REMOVED FOR CHECK IN

We understand these unfavorable practices may occur due to confusion or misunderstanding of American’s policy. We hope this advanced notification will be helpful with your future bookings.

As always, we appreciate your attention to this matter and thank you for your business.